The annual Soil Health Workshop has never been short of wonderful insights and this year was no different with guest speakers, Lance Gunderson and Nick Dallmann.
Lance Gunderson of Regen Ag Lab started off the morning discussing a few different soil tests that go beyond the traditional approach to soil testing. Gunderson identified each of the tests strengths and when each would be best utilized:
The Cover Crop test is excellent at showing what nutrients were in the soil that the plant took up.
The PFLA test identifies fat content in the cell membrane; higher fat = more biomass = healthier soil.
Aggregate Stability indicates the soils ability to withstand disturbances from the natural elements.
Did you know? Tillage does not break the aggregates apart, tillage introduces oxygen to the soil, which causes microbes to destroy and restructure their "home" (aka. the aggregates).
Water Holding Capacity provides an estimate of the quantity of water that may be available to crops.
Gunderson noted that if you have issues with standing water in your fields, the cause could be due to a hard pan! Instead of ripping and pushing down the hard pan further, he recommended planting taproot type cover crop species to break up that compaction!
Total Nutrient Digest provides you with the nutrient potential of your soil, while most extract tests only provide you with what is “available”.
And finally, the Haney test gives a more in-depth look at other soil characteristics that include soil N, P, and K, soil organic N and P, microbial biomass, water extractable C, and C:N balance.
Although he gave recommendations of Haney test values to be above 7 (and ideally above 10), the MOST IMPORTANT principle is to make sure the organic carbon to nitrogen ratio is balanced!
Nick Dallmann kicked off the afternoon session discussing his dairy farm, Dallmann East River Dairy, located in Calumet County halfway between Lake Michigan and Lake Winnebago. Like many farmers in Ozaukee County, Dallmann is used to farming heavy red clay soils, but that has not deterred him from trying soil health practices and, in fact, finds them to be the best way around managing these difficult soils!
Dallmann plants a corn silage-alfalfa/grass rotation. The corn silage is planted after terminated winter rye, harvested winter rye, and harvested 1st crop alfalfa.
Interestingly, he plants alfalfa with forage oats companion crop and meadow fescue!
He has experimented in planting green, uses a ZML toolbar for minimal disturbance and gets the manure below the surface, and has used a drone to terminate cover crops in a wet field.
As for manure management, Dallmann has a suite of innovative practices he is working with that include:
Rain 360, a self-navigating agricultural irrigation machine that uses a long hose reel to deliver liquid manure directly to the base of plants in rows.
A manure pipeline that allows for a more efficient and accessible way to get manure to his fields.
And finally, center pivots which involves sprinklers that rotate and apply liquid manure to crops in a circle around the central pivot.
With total attendance up this year to 77 participants and continued positive feedback about the event, we look forward to hosting many great speakers in the years to come! Thank you to all attendees, presenters, and sponsors for your help in making this event so successful.
**We have a Soil Health Seminar coming up in March 2025 that will feature Ray Archuleta and Russel Hedricks!! Check out the website below for more information and registration:
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